


Of Bonding and Baking

by dragonnan



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Team Bonding, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-16
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2017-11-07 21:06:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonnan/pseuds/dragonnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Welcome to the Island of Misfit Toys.  Here's a cookie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Bonding and Baking

**Author's Note:**

> I've not seen Spiderman, so I apologize for any character misrepresentations.
> 
> Update: I've seen Spiderman now. I still like this fic haha!

 

Tony leaned forward on the couch, hands mussing up into his hair. He was tired. Tired and angry. Angry and... bleeding. Not much. Enough. Not his fault this time. Well... not in the "accidental idiot" way or the "saving the world from gigantisaur ugly alien worm dragons" way. Okay, maybe the first one actually qualified. Given he'd ducked his face into that swing rather than see a sixteen year old kid get walloped. Forgetting, of course, that the sixteen year old kid still had superpowers even when he wasn't wearing a suit and Tony... did not.

 

“Idiot.” He pulled the towel from his forehead and threw it, not caring where it landed. A small hand moved across the skin inches from where it had been resting. Tony winced, jerking his head.

 

Pepper moved with him. She'd never been terribly off put by his various injuries. Burns, cuts, arc reactors... She'd stuck her hand in his damned chest...

 

“He's just a kid, Tony.”

 

He moved his eyes, watching her as she poured alcohol on another small towel before pressing it to his head. He winced, again, but didn't pull away this time. Stung like a fuck though...

 

“When I was his age...”

 

“When you were his age,” Pepper interrupted, dropping her hands to her lap, “both of your parents had just died.”

 

He shrugged. “Yeah? And I turned out fine. Kid will be fine too.” He grabbed for the towel she held but she pulled it from reach.

 

He pointed to his scalp. “Bleeding.”

 

She tipped her head, watching him steadily.

 

He wanted to joke about this. Wanted to get her rolling her eyes or even start a dialogue. Dialogue nothing, he preferred a down and out with all the trimmings cause much as he really wanted to discuss all the dark things associated with childhood grief he just didn't have the energy. Plus he just really, really loved the way that she argued.

 

But she was still looking at him.

 

And he wasn't able to argue with that look. That look that said she wasn't angry with him. That look that said, far worse... that she understood him. You can't argue with someone who's already on your side...

 

Of course, he still tried.

 

“What about his Gramma Bea...”

 

“Aunt May.”

 

“Right. May. What's her story? She can't look after this kid?”

 

The look again, though there was more steel and less promise of a happy ending.

 

“I know you read the report,”

 

“I didn't, I _looked_ at the report,”

 

“Because I left it on your desk,”

 

“More like threw it with a stack of other crap and...”

 

“And I also saw the expense report...”

 

“Then there was the meeting with Captain Hook,”

 

“and the donation you made to the assisted living facility where she's staying.”

 

She wasn't smiling, but there was a softness in her face. And he couldn't beat that. But then... he never wanted to. He'd lived his whole life to have someone look at him that way.

 

He sighed, his eyes never dropping from hers. Her fingers curled inside his hands.

 

“Go talk to him. Tony, he's just a kid. He's terrified. And right now, he's alone. And he needs somebody.”

 

_Who understands him._

 

He heard the last in the squeeze of their hands.

 

Finding the kid wasn't hard. After leaving Pepper in their rooms, he took the elevator to the top. On his way out through the glass doors, he glanced back and up, just barely making out the shadow hunched up among the rafters.

 

“He's outside.” The words softly spoken; barely there just like the man that had spoken them. Tony nodded and went out onto the roof.

 

A lot of people found the platform unnerving. The height, the walkway, the extremely long drop. Tony had never had an issue with heights. Enough swan dives tended to numb a person to the whole experience. Still, though, he could respect Pepper's wishes to never, ever, ever-ever take a midnight stroll on a sidewalk with no railing above a street that made the cars driving on it look like tic-tacs.

 

The kid, of course, had managed to find a perch that made, even Tony, feel just the slightest tickle of discomfort in his throat. Sticky fingers or not, he wanted to fling a butterfly net over his shoulders and drag the sulking teenager inside.

 

“Best view in the city.” He offered, instead.

 

Not sulking, he amended, when the hand lifted to scrub something from a suddenly blushing cheek.

 

“Not bad.” Was returned in a scratchy, muttered mumble. Scrunched up on the peak of the glowing letter, the young man kept his eyes fixed outward.

 

This wasn't Tony's comfort zone. Anybody would be better at this. Natasha was a den mother compared to what he brought to the table. A naked green Banner would be... actually, that sounded really, really terrible. Like, FBI watch list...

 

“They were all I had... after my parents...”

 

The kid was still staring away, but his voice drifted back over his shoulders. Chilly with the night. Cold.

 

Tony didn't move. Hands remained sunk in his pockets. The wind flapped at his shirttails. Lifted the wild tangle of dusty brown hair from the kid's forehead. Pulled at the rumpled checkered shirt until he looked like a bird about to take flight.

 

“I should have...” _Done something. Said something. Listened more. Argued less. Told him I was sorry. Told him I loved him..._

 

It didn't matter that the sentence was incomplete; Tony knew every word that wasn't said. He knew it all by heart.

 

“Pete...”

 

A snuffle and the sharp face turned even further away. “I couldn't save him...” A choked wallow of words; twisted into a shudder of broken misery. His face, finally, tucked into his arms.

 

There had been another kid, many years ago, who'd said similar words to the only father he'd had left.

 

“You're right.” He said, moving closer, now. The city was a golden haze of blurring lights. A weather system had moved in and a mist of barely there rain began to drop the temperature even more.

 

Peter turned to him, startled. Eyes a wash of red chiseled deep. Stopped less than two feet from the kid, Tony looked out, away, giving what he could of privacy while Peter sniffed and wiped his face.

 

“You couldn't save him.” He continued. His hands tightened in his pockets. “You wanted to. You'd have done anything you could.” He swallowed, eyes moving to the walkway beneath his heels. “He's gone.”

 

Peter shifted. Tony breathed deeply.

 

“But... you aren't alone.”

 

Another gulp, and lifting his head, Tony could see Peter nodding. He didn't have anything else to say, and he figured he'd toed close enough to overstepping as it was. What Fury had been thinking... well he never could figure that man in any event.

 

He was three feet from the door when a cat's tread stopped him. He was half turned back when slender arms accosted him more tightly than he preferred when he wasn't in armor. He stood, his own arms held away as though he'd been embraced by a leopard. But the sniffs and shudders had resumed and, awkward as it was...

 

He held the kid. Held him until the pained gasps started to fade. Until his own discomfort lost some of its scalp raising prickle. He wasn't a hugger, really. He liked to own the space including whatever space was occupied by someone else. But he didn't like sharing. Once he'd claimed someone's space, he foreclosed on the property and all current tenants were required to move out.

 

He pulled away while he had the chance, moving his grip to surprisingly muscled shoulders.

 

“Hey, Pete?”

 

Eyes, still smudged with red, lifted to his face.

 

“Kinda cold out here, yeah?”

 

Peter nodded.

 

Stopping short of ruffling that startling growth of hair hedge, Tony followed the kid inside. Cap was behind the bar when they shut the door behind them. Never much of a big drinker, especially now that it effected him much like a glass of air, the guy had actually fixed himself a tumbler of warm milk. Like, literally.

 

“Are you alright, Peter?”

 

Another nod and even something of a smile. “I'm okay. Thank you Mr. Rogers.”

 

Tony tried not to giggle while images of star spangled Cap riding the little red trolley through Nazi Germany trundled in his skull. God he was too loopy not to be drunk.

 

Steve moved to the main floor, bringing a plate of something with him. It was... cookies. Shaped like stars. What. The. F...

 

“Are you hungry?”

 

Eyeing the plate, still grieving, clearly, but the rumble in his stomach overruled tears, for the moment. Peter thanked Cap while scooping about six of the sprinkled cookies – immediately shoving one in his mouth.

 

Steve grinned as Peter wandered to one of the couches next to the span of windows. “You make a wonderful father.”

 

Not quite able to keep from shuddering, dear God the thought, Tony smirked back. “Yeah? You're one to talk, Big Momma. You bake those yourself?”

 

Not even embarrassed, Cap set the plate on counter before sipping his milk. Shuffling steps Tony didn't have to look to identify stumbled out of the stairwell. “Chocolate chip?”

 

Hopeful query as Bruce hunched into a stool next to the bar.

 

Steve pushed the plate across the counter before bending down out of sight. A noteworthy feat in and of itself.

 

“Still in the oven. These are just ordinary sugar cookies.”

 

Tony squinted and tipped his head, trying to spot the homespun senior citizen that had replaced their homespun fearless leader. “Good God, man. Do I even want to know where you found an apron? Have you been digging through Nat's wardrobe? Cause the good stuff is in the third dresser drawer down. You know, underwires, crotchless panties...”

 

Fire engine heat licked up across the bit of forehead visible over the counter.

 

Timing, as it was, Natalie joined their group in time to hear the tail end of the torment. Her eyebrows said more than most politicians on election day. Slithering close (because there wasn't a single move the woman made that wasn't something snaky) she lifted a sugar cookie from the plate with two fingers.

 

“Stark, try not to damage him if at all possible. He's just a kid.”

 

A snort from Tony and an indignant scowl from Steve as the man achieved full height. “Excuse me...?”

 

“Kid? Have you seen this man's glutes?” Tony finished before glancing back at Steve. “Oh quit. Skintight spandex doesn't leave a lot to the imagination.”

 

Another eyebrow move and Natalie pointed over her shoulder. “I was talking about him.”

 

Three sets of eyes followed the finger to the maroon shaded teen choking around a mouthful of pastry. Tony slide his hands over his face while Bruce hurried across the room to slap breathing back into Pete's dying corpse.

 

“Good God, we broke him.”

 

Natalie, smooth and slinky, tipped her head. “We who?” Walking a few feet, she looked up, stepped a foot to the left, and suddenly flipped her cookie towards the ceiling. At the apex of its flight, a face lunged from the shadows as Clint snapped the treat from the air. With his teeth.

 

Tony blinked.

 

He turned back to Steve.

 

“Chocolate chip, you said?”

 

The timer timely went off at that moment and Bruce, pulling a still coughing Peter along with his arm across his shoulders, joined the rest of them at the counter. Steve loaded up another plate as they settled in for their late night snack. Or very early morning snack.

 

They were just starting in when a shuddering thunder roll announced the final member of their group. Thor, grinning at them through the windows, dropped his hammer against one shoulder and entered.

 

“Friends, a fine evening to you!”

 

Pete, holding out the cookie plate, smiled widely. “Hey, Thor. Want a cookie?”

 

Eyes already sparkling as it was, Thor's face glowed at the kid.

 

“Young warrior, thank you! If these were crafted by our stalwart leader I would partake of them most eagerly!” English high tea as his words were, he went at the offerings with the enthusiasm of a certain blue monster.

 

“How is it that even Maybelline here knew you had a dessert fetish yet I'm completely out of the loop on this one?”

 

Steve shrugged. “We have a shared interest?”

 

Tony's attention shifted towards Thor, who grinned, mightily, through cookie caked teeth. “You're saying you bake?”

 

Bruce chuckled as he delicately gathered spilled crumbs in his hands before brushing them off on a napkin.

 

“I'm not sure operating a toaster counts as baking but don't tell him that. He seems to view it as an honorable profession.”

 

Tony closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “He does know that Iron Chef isn't a series about warriors?”

 

As everyone ate and talked and laughed, Tony let himself sink just a little in weariness. He ached, still, and was now really starting to feel it. He wanted to go back to his room. Let Pepper coddle him and kiss his hurts and his not hurts and fall asleep for ten days.

 

But... as he looked around the crowded counter space – at all the real estate and the single tenants that lived within it – he smiled. With them, he didn't feel the need to claim and control. And he didn't feel the need to reinforce his personal shields either.

 

He looked at Peter, dead center among all the misfits. Their newest, youngest member. Thor was telling him some story about a feast and an ox and a sea monster. Nothing of his cat suited persona rested in the slope of Peter's shoulders at that moment. Nothing of what he was save a tired kid forgetting his demons for a night. Forgetting the ones he'd fought that day and the ones waiting for him when, once again, he found himself alone.

 

“But, he's not alone.” Tony said softly.

 

Bruce turned his head, curious. “Say something?”

 

Tony smiled, reaching for the last cookie on the plate.

 

“Yeah. I said, this time, let's make snickerdoodles.”

 


End file.
